Wednesday, November 7, 2012

The Rise And Fall Of Iraq’s Inspector Generals, Part I Of Washington And Baghdad’s Failed Attempt To Fight Corruption

In 2004, the United States under the auspices of the
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) created three agencies to fight
corruption in Iraq. One of those was the Inspector Generals (IGs), which were
to operate within each ministry and government body. That would put them at the
forefront of investigating crime. The IGs instantly caused resentment and
suspicion, and a fierce battle erupted over who would control them. That
undermined their independence, and made them largely ineffective overseers of
Baghdad.

The Coalition Provisional Authority created the Inspector
Generals to monitor the work of Iraq’s ministries. Order 57 issued in February 2004 created an IG office in each ministry. They were supposed to conduct
audits, recommend cases and investigate them, and then pass on the information
to the Integrity Commission, the premier anti-corruption agency, and the
Central Criminal Court of Iraq. They were given extra authority by having
subpoena power. CPA head Paul Bremer appointed the first 29 IGs in June just
before he closed up shop, and went back to the United States. It turned out the
inspectors didn’t have much authority, because they were not independent, but rather part of the ministries. CPA Order 57 also did not allow cooperation
between inspectors from different ministries. The rules and responsibilities
were so oblique that many IGs believed that they had to go to their ministers
to get permission before they gave any information to the Integrity Commission,
putting a huge barrier to any serious anti-corruption work. The Commission set
up a coordinating committee to try to solve some of these problems, but it is
just for consultation, so its decisions do not have to be followed. The
Americans believed that the Inspector Generals in Iraq would operate much like
their American counterparts. This was to be a basic check upon the new
government’s excesses. It turned out the planning behind its implementation was
poor to say the least. The CPA set up a new institutions without giving much
thought on how it was going to work within the existing Iraqi bureaucracy,
because like too many decisions at that time, the U.S. went ahead with a plan
without consulting with the Iraqis.

The faults with the United States’ strategy were immediately
apparent. The most important problem was that the Americans did not provide any
real support to the Inspector Generals. The Justice and State Departments along
with the CPA gave little to them in terms of funds, leaving only the Pentagon,
which gave them some money. It wasn’t until the very end of the CPA that $11
million was given to both the IGs and Integrity Commission to train some of the
staff. That neglect continued for the next several years. The State Department
for example, did not set up an adviser to the inspectors until 2007. He had
no budget, and the office saw constant turnover in officials. Not only that,
but the United States would sometimes interfere in the IGs work. For example,
the Pentagon told the Defense Ministry Inspector General to stop looking into
corruption according to a 2007 U.S. Embassy report. (1) The U.S. also did nothing as the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki systematically tried to undermine all of the anti-corruption agencies. Basically, the U.S.
set up the infrastructure for fighting graft and theft, but then did nothing to
help it or stand up for its own creation. The IGs were almost a stillbirth as a
result.

The rules the CPA created for the Inspector Generals proved
difficult to say the least. The IGs were to investigate the ministries. It then
had to turn over its findings to the Integrity Commission. The Commission would
review the case, and then try to gain more information if necessary. If it
thought it was worthy, it would then go to the Central Criminal Court of Iraq,
another American creation, which deals with government corruption. An
investigative judge would go over the findings once again, before finally
deciding whether the case would be prosecuted. This was a huge amount of red
tape to go through before any real action was taken. The process was so
cumbersome that if corruption was found in say a government contract, it would
probably be finalized, and large amounts of money expended, and perhaps even be
completed, before anything was done about it. That means there is no real check
upon the government’s procurement process, which is one the largest sources of
corruption within Iraq. The amount of time it takes for a case to ever go to
court also provides ample opportunity for an official under suspicion to call
in political favors to stop the investigation or flee the country. This was yet
another sign that the CPA did not think through what it was doing when it
established the Inspector Generals.

The fake bomb detectors that the
Interior Ministry purchased were a perfect example of how the Inspector
Generals were ineffective in their job. Beginning in 2007, Iraq bought over
1,500 ADE-651 bomb detectors from an English company for $122 million. The
Ministry’s IG said that they could have been bought for $18,500 a piece, but
Iraq ended up spending nearly $60,000 on each one. (2) Immediately, there were
criticisms of the purchase including from the United States, which tried to
convince the Ministry against their use. Eventually, Great Britain banned the
export of the devices, and the maker was indicted. By 2011, the Interior IG
discovered that 75% of the money spent on the ADE-651’s went to kickbacks to
Iraqi officials. At the head of this scam was allegedly the Director General of
the Explosives Department, which the Integrity Commission wanted to prosecute.
(3) Interior Minister Jawad Bolani however, invoked Article 136(b) of the Iraqi criminal code that allows ministers to stop any investigations from going to court. The result is that the anti-bomb devices are still used in the
streets of Iraq to this day despite the fact that they have proven to be fakes,
and they were part of a scam by Interior Ministry officials to steal public
money. This showed that even in the most public of cases, the anti-corruption
agencies have little leeway in overseeing the government’s actions, nor
stopping powerful interests from carrying out their illegal deeds.

Even in the rare cases where the
inspectors were able to uncover high-level corruption, and get it to court,
there was little chance that the prosecution would be successful. In June 2009,
then Trade Minister Falah al-Sudani resigned under a cloud controversy
involving manipulation of the national food ration system, which he oversaw.
(5) He ended up being arrested at Baghdad airport along with his brothers who
also worked at the ministry as they attempted to leave the country. The
Inspector Generals office at Trade originally found that Sudani’s brother and nephew were taking kickbacks on sugar imports, but he was threatened to keep quiet about it. Later, when the inspector questioned why the ministry was
buying spoiled food, he was transferred to an office in China. Eventually,
the IGs work paid off, and charges were brought against Minister Sudani and his
family members. In April 2010, a court dropped the case due to lack of evidence, and in September an appeal by the Integrity Commission failed as
well. This was the first time a minister had ever been brought to court since
the 2003 invasion for corruption. It was a huge matter as well as Minister
Sudani and his relatives were suspected of stealing anywhere from $4-$8
billion. Still, the Iraqi justice system was not willing to take on the case,
probably because of political pressure as Sudani was from Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki’s Dawa Party. That showed that the country’s courts were just as
ineffective in dealing with corruption as the inspectors.

A major impediment to the
inspectors carrying out their work was the opposition they created within the
Iraqi government. Many officials believed that the IGs worked for the United
States since the CPA created them. Later, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
attempted to assume control over the hiring and firing of the inspectors, which
led ministers to believe they were spies for the premier. Finally, since the
ministries were run like personnel fiefs by their leaders, many of which were
corrupt or allowed theft and graft by their underlings, they too were against
the existence of the IGs. One inspector told the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) that if he did his job, his minister would either
try to fire him, or worse, kill him. As a result, many officials attempted to
limit investigations by the Inspector Generals, their independence was
attacked, and corruption charges were sometimes used to attack political
rivals. In 2007, Maliki told American staffers that he opposed the idea of
independent agencies looking into corruption. The result was that a 2011 report
by SIGIR found that most inspectors had been cooed by this harsh environment,
and refused to investigate anything involving high officials. Besides the Board
of Supreme Audit, which had been created by the British in the 1920s to look
into the country’s finances, Iraq was un-used to the idea of transparency, let
alone anti-graft agencies. When the CPA came along and created the Inspector
Generals in 2004, it was correctly interpreted as a foreign effort to check the
government. The negative response by the ministers and premier could have been
predicted.

At the same time, there have been
several initiatives to get rid of the Inspector Generals all together. Judge
Rahim al-Ogaili, the third head of the Integrity Commission, was opposed to the
inspectors even though his office relied upon them to conduct investigations.
He suggested doing away with them. In 2011, a government review found the
inspectors useless, and both it, and the integrity committee in parliament
proposed shutting them down. At the beginning of the next year, Maliki fired eight more inspectors, and threatened to get rid of the rest. In October,
the cabinet created a committee to decide whether the inspectors should be
abolished. The inspectors have been able to do little to stop real corruption
going on within the government. At the same time, this is largely because so
many oppose their work. The real reason why the prime minister and others have
likely proposed putting an end to the IG offices is that they want the freedom
to do as they please without anyone checking on their activities.

The United States had good
intentions when it created the Inspector Generals, but it failed to plan,
implement, and support the idea. The result has been the emaciation of the
offices within the government. They are now under the sway of their individual
ministers and the prime minister. They often turn up corruption cases, but can
do nothing about them unless they involve low-level officials. Again and again,
it has been proven that there is no political or institutional support for
their work. That has led to continuous discussion of getting rid of them, along
with other threats and intimidation. Corruption in Iraq started under Saddam,
and expanded after the U.S. invasion since so much money suddenly became
available for rebuilding the country. Iraq’s elite took advantage of that
situation to enrich themselves, and have staunchly protected their right to do
so since then. It’s for that reason that the Inspector Generals will always be
limited in the scope of their activities.

FOOTNOTES

1. U.S. Embassy, “Review of Anticorruption Efforts in Iraq
Working Draft,” 2007

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News, and I have been interviewed by Rudaw English. I was interviewed on CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com